Know You By Heart
by H.L.B
Summary: Lupin muses about what a fool he had been to trust Sirius while waiting to meet a friend he hasn't seen in over a decade.


Disclaimer : ASCAP owns the song, Warner Bros. owns the Potter-verse.

Author's Note: Lupin is one of the most tragic characters in the Potter-Verse. He is tragic just because he lost everything important to him in about 48 hours on that Hallowe'en night when Harry was one-year-old. He is tragic because of the deeper isolation we all sense this must have driven him to. How do you learn to trust again?

  
  


**"I Know You By Heart" based on the song by Diane Scanion and Eve Nelson**

  
  


_Midnights in Winter_

_The glowing fire lights up your face_

_in orange and gold..._

The Bluesy soulful voice of the singer floated out of the muggle radio into the café where Remus Lupin sat, waiting. A small smile played at his lips... Midnights, glowing fire... How many times had they all stayed up by the fire in the common room far too late? He had always loved the way the fire lit the faces of his friends... the golden light that made even the shadows it produced seem warm. How often had those faces been flushed in excitement or triumph after some prank or adventure?

_I see your sweet smile_

_Shine through the darkness_

_Its line is etched in my memory._

_So I'd know you by heart..._

Smiling. That was how he remembered them best, even Sirius. When the thought of his old friends what he thought of first was the image of their smiling faces in the warm firelight. There had been tears, too, of course. How often had the intimacy of the warm and golden light allowed friends to share secrets and seek comfort? 

He thought they had opened their hearts to one another, really known each other... been known by each other. But he was wrong.

_Mornings in April_

_Sharing our secrets, _

_we'd walk until the morning was gone_

_We were like children, laughing for hours._

_The joy you gave me lives on and on_

_'Cause I know you by heart..._

The had grown up together, laughed and cried like children and like the adults they were becoming. The trust and the friendship Remus had in those years had changed his life. He truly believed he knew their hearts and they knew his ...and it had been wonderful. But he had been wrong.

They had all been betrayed by one he loved best... yes, it was true. He loved Sirius best of his band of brothers and sisters. They were all his best friends but Sirius was the one to whom he was closest. He had thought Sirius to truly be his brother in the deepest sense of the word. He would have walked through fire for Sirius and believed Sirius would have for any of them. He had been a fool.

_I still hear your voice_

_On warm Summer nights_

_Whispering like the wind..._

The hell of it for Remus was that Sirius was so much a part of his memories... so much a part of his experiences. He couldn't think of any of his old friends without thinking of the bastard. Even now, what Sirius would say or do would come to mind, unbidden. Then he would have to face, yet again, the truth that he had deceived and betrayed them all.

Sirius had destroyed the only true family Remus had ever had outside of his own parents. He had done it by betraying two of them to their murderer and killing another with his own wand. The fact that he now rotted in Azkaban with the Dementors was cold comfort. There had been seven in their little "gang." Now Lily, James, and Peter were dead. Sirius was in Azkaban. And the remaining three? He, Arabella, and Mundungus, had been scattered to the winds by Dumbledore who sought to save the lives that remained.

_You left in Autumn._

_The leaves were turning_

_I walked down roads of orange and gold..._

It had become his favourite season, Autumn. He liked the chill in the air, the welcoming fires springing up in hearths, the colors, the earthy smells... Now he hated Autumn. The trees blazing with color seemed an obscenity in a world where he was alone. Alone, except for his demons. Had it all been a lie? That is what he longed to ask Sirius. Had any of it been real or had he been playing them all for fools right along?

_I saw your sweet smile_

_I heard your laughter_

_You're still here beside me every day_

_'Cause I know you by heart..._

Somewhere along the way the echoes of his friends' laughter had stopped being something about which he might smile and had turned into the sharp prick of grief's knife in his heart. At school he had thought himself the luckiest one alive to find such friends... people he could open his heart to. Now he wondered if it hadn't been a cruel joke. Certainly it had become a curse... one even harder to bear than the disease that let the moon rule his life.

_'Cause I know you by heart..._

He had heard this song before, this singer. She was dead, too, if he recalled. She had achieved success only after her untimely death. A soft snort of harsh laughter escaped him. Was this world intended to be nothing but pain? It certainly seemed so. In his life happiness had been a trap set to make the pain to come later even worse.

  
  


"Remus?" the voice was questioning, uncertain.

He looked up into the face that was terribly familiar and terribly changed. Arabella Figg. He hadn't seen her since... It had been ten years at least.

"Ella. Hello. Please sit." He couldn't seem to form complex sentences.

She sat across from him and their eyes locked for a moment, neither of them saying a word._ Was this the way survivors of a war would look at one another years later?_ Remus wondered. 

Ella had changed. Lines had taken up residence around the young eyes which bore an unmistakable sadness. _Was it just seeing him, or did her eyes always look so sad?_ Strands of silver glinted here and there in her hair, and she seemed pale. She looked older than she should. _Just like me_, he thought, self consciously tucking a strand of his greying hair behind his ear.

"It seems silly to ask how you've been, but I can't think of anything else." she offered as a waitress brought over a second cup and replaced the pot of coffee.

Remus watched the waitress leave while he tried to think of what to say.

"It's hard to say. I'm well except for- you know..."

"But hasn't the Wolfsbane potion helped?" Ella asked quickly, sounding a bit anxious.

Remus looked up at her in surprise, he hadn't imagined many people were aware of the development of the potion. After all, he was in the test group right now.

"Well, yes, it makes my transformations... so much easier... but have you been following the news in this field of study, Ella? I didn't think most people were aware of the potion."

She colored and concentrated on putting some sugar in her coffee.

His throat felt tight as he imagined his old friend keeping up with news about his condition all these years.

"Ella, that's, I mean, I'm touched you kept up an interest."

She offered a small smile, "You know me, I've always been a dabbler. But I take it that you don't know much about how the potion was developed, then?"

"Well, no, not really... but how would YOU know that?"

"It's fascinating, really," Ella continued, ignoring the question, "a great deal of anthropological research was done on fairy stories and folklore of muggles with the idea that some lost knowledge might be hinted at therein. Wolfsbane was discovered from hints in some obscure eastern European folk tales. The potions masters just needed to be pointed in the right direction. They may even have found something that might help vampyres with daylight, too."

Remus raised an eyebrow and chuckled suddenly,

"Well, what will the muggles do at Hallowe'en if we cure all the beasties and things that go 'bump' in the night?"

Ella laughed, "I think they'll handle it."

"So where was all that background stuff published? I never heard about it and I'm in the study group!"

"Oh, er, well it hasn't exactly been published yet." Ella offered weakly.

"Then how do you know about it? Ella, what aren't you telling me?"

She colored again and looked down at her cup as if it held the answer. Finally she sighed and looked him in the eye.

"Muddy Fletcher gave me the idea. It gave me something to do while I was rattling around Europe trying to stay a step ahead of the remaining Death Eaters."

Remus was thunderstruck. His mouth was working but no sound came out for a moment.

"You?" he finally stammered.

Ella held her hand up.

"Not all of it, Remus. I had nothing to do with the potion development. I just ferreted out the folklore looking for stories of 'beasties' that had been cured somehow. When I figured a few of them out I wrote an old classmate suggesting that Wolfsbane and Moonstones might be the key ingredients. Actually the hardest part was reconstructing the main ingredients from the tales. They'd become a bit unspecific over the centuries. You know, 'a glowing magical stone' instead of 'a moonstone.'"

Remus was shaking his head.

"I can't believe it was you-"

"-And Muddy, it was his idea."

"Why?"

"Why what? Why'd I do it? Remus do you even have to ask?"

Remus nodded.

"Merlin's cauldron, I hate him!" Ella suddenly spat out, "Look what he's done to you, to us! Why do you think I'd do it? I did it because you're my friend and I love you and I couldn't stand to think of you going through all this crap alone. I thought if I could at least do something about the- the- Dammit!" Her eye were bright with tears and Ella looked out the window with a fierce expression, blinking hard.

Remus looked at her hands, balled in fists on the table as his had been earlier. He took one and smoothed it out then did the same with the other.

"I hate him, too" Remus whispered, "maybe as much as I loved him. But I'm only just now realizing how much I've let him take away from me."

Ella looked at him, with confusion playing over her face.

"My heart, my whole life... I've locked it up and thrown away the key, Ella. When I realized what he had done, how we'd all been betrayed-"

"-How foolish we were to trust him," Ella interrupted bitterly.

"Exactly. I was so wrong, so very wrong about him... how could I dare trust myself to love another friend after that?"

Ella looked down at her coffee cup again as a tear finally escaped her eye. She nodded.

"I wasn't sure you'd understand," she said softly, " I wanted to get in touch with you years ago when I came back... but I was too afraid. I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

_I saw your sweet smile_

_I heard your laughter_

_You're still here beside me every day_

_'Cause I know you by heart._

_I know you by heart._

  
  


("I Know You By Heart" is recorded by Eva Cassidy on the CDs Songbird and Eva By Heart)


End file.
